blog.species5618.net

I walk past a CEX shop on the way to the office from the buis stop every morning. If an attack of boredom strikes, of the need to get a TECH fix, I have a wonder in.

I have never understaood their pricing structure, in the past i have seen

• 2nd hand Wii’s 30 quid more then a NEW one next door
• Pink DS 40 quid more than a new on, in stock in Argos

yet today??I was surprised to see them selling SIM packs for 3.99 or 4.99 which are available in the high street for free, or 1.99 (in the case of THREE, and that was direct from a THREE shop)??

In a world which seem to be full of drug dealers driving stolen or unregistered cars with no TAX, MOT or insurance, the DVLA and the NCP clamp one which is registered, SORNed and ALMOST of the road.

I say almost a, small part of it was overhanging a pavement, so the NCP/DVLA Jobsworths clamped it anyway

Well done Ian, it a shame the BBC have portrayed you as the baddy here

Full Story HERE
Click here for Local Paper article
Click here for the BBC article
Click here for the Telegraph article

It is interesting to NOTE the local paper article is neutral and covers the story in an unbias manor, where as the BBC story is very pro NCP/DLVA making Ian look like a menace.

The NCP man is qouted as saying “He took it upon himself to commit a serious act of vandalism. He put himself at risk and he put other people at risk.”
But Valdalism is “Destroying or damaging, or attempting to destroy or damage, the property of another without the owner’s consent“, but it was Ian’s car, So could Ian now sue NCP for libel

been to london on the train today, usual trip, drive to swindon, get train to paddington

holy fuck, the price of an open return has gone up by EIGHT f**king quid to 98, since my last trip two months ago

and then I had to stand there and back, someone is taking this piss

Trying not to be stereo typical, but while out this lunch time is saw, what i can only describe as Vicky Pollard with a push chair, and the 3 yr child, occupying the push chair, had a portable DVD player on his lap to keep hmm busy while the mother discussed the price of stuff in the pound shop with another Vicky Pollard look-a-like

Fucking outrage. go on te bus this morning to find the price of a DayRider ticket had gone up again, 2nd time in less than 12 months. 9 months ago it was 2.50 it is now 2.80, that is a 12% price hike.

the Sinlge ticket has also gone up from 1.40 to 1.50 (7%)

But then i suppose if i was not such a fat and lazy b’tard, I could cycle (only 2 miles)

Someone in my immediate family decided it would be good to go ice skating on Sunday, ??22 later for a family ticket, there I am making a pratt of myself on the ICE, being over taken my 8 year olds

Having fallen over a few times, I now have a few bruises, aches and pains

Once we had finished making a complete fool of our selves, we decided to sit back and watch the Swindon Junior ice hockey team match, and was shocked to see 5 years olds skating around like they were born with skates on , so annoying

It???s been a long time since I had an Indian take away, but Friday night the urge got the better of me
So we call the local, trusty garlic Indian, and waited for it to arrive, 45 mins later, one steaming hot madras for me and a Korma for the wife. Then it all went horribly wrong
The Fuckers have a NEW chef, the Madras was more curry flavour tomato sauce, Wikipedia says ???Madras curry or Madras sauce is a fairly hot curry sauce, red in colour and with heavy use of chilli powder??? this was more the was out of a empty chilli box.
Then the wife exclaims ???there is stuff in the korma??? for be more precise sultanas, she hates fruit of any kind in cooked food. Some may say sultanas are supposed to be there, but we have not seen them before in a korma from this place
End Result, no more Indian take ways (deliveries) from the garlic, so may have to go for collections from the Polash instead, however they are very slow, but next to a pub !

Over the xmas break i thought i would review my data backup process, i have a few friends with kit at their house linked to mine via long range WiFi !, so File replication between server seemed like a good plan !
Got some big disks attached to each server using??USB 2, and setup replication, Sorted,
NAH, nothing is that easy,
NTFRS has got to be the most quirky thing ever to setup, my first word of advise, is go for a pint after you configure it, and BEFORE you put any data in the replicated folder. no in fact, that is No 2. No 1 has to be test you infrastructure HARD first.
My 1st snag was a delayed write error on my USB2 disk, which corrupted the USN data for the replicated folder, and completely screwed the whole replication process, after some soul searching, crying, fretting and LOTS of cursing. I reset the entire NTFRS config for that server.
Sorted I though, no such LUCK
another Delays write error, Closer inspection revealed i had been a cheap skate when i added USB2 to my aging server, it had a ???VIA??? chip, DOH!, DOH!, DOH!, DOH!, DOH!
Quick trip to a local computer retailer?? (not PCWorld), we have a local back street guy who is VERY good,
and i kissed good bye to the I/O issues. This is cool so i thought, all my data became “pre install” and everything seemed to be fine,
This is where the pint comes in, I “moved” (big mistake) my data from the pre_install folder to the replicate folder, and everything looked good, get up the next morning, NO DATA AROOGA AROOGA CURSE CURSE CURSE (BTW this was XMAS day, i have a record of upseting the wife, but tellting her i may have lost all the photos on XMAS would surely top it all)
after a week of searching volume shadows copies and offline data on all my PCs and friends servers, I had successfully recovered ALL our data, (can i have my testicles back now please)
so 1st things first MAKE Copy or three, and try again !
This time i did go for a pint or 3 before “COPYING” in my valuable data, and all i NOW Ok
all the data if almost fully synchronise across the servers, well 150 G of photos and other random data, will take a while to sync over wifi !
Some serious Lessons learnt
1. don???t fuck with your home IT on Xmas Eve
2. don???t rush NTFRS config
3. don???t MOVE data when you have the space to copy it

Went Shopping at PCWorld over the weekend
Apart for the mental shock of stepping into PCWorld, I experienced something which just goes to highlight my thoughts about PCWorld Techies

The PCWorld till are windows 2000 based touch screen epos systems, so you woudl think, a PCWorld Techie would have no problem keeping them working,

however 2 of the 3 tills in the gloucester branch were offline due to Techincal problems

Go Figure

I??have had quite a few of these lately ,

this is the result of spam tosser spoofing email from my domain, but the bit that has pissed me off here is the fact the target email server even bothered to send a reply.

I know the email is spoofed as it has breached the SPF, so why even bother responding, Just delete it. respond during the SMTP ??conversation, not afterwards

Apparently almost 90% of all email on the internet is spam, but how much of that is bounces and “no user here” errors from mail servers with admins who have a 12th centry idea of server config